Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  * * * * *

  From the evidence it appeared that Aunt Matilda had either been trying to hang the picture where it belonged, or taking it down, and it had slipped out of her hands and fallen, and she had hidden it behind the drape and hastily swept up the broken glass.

  But why? Even granting that Aunt Matilda might behave in such an erratic fashion (which was obvious from the evidence), I couldn't imagine a sensible reason.

  It occurred to me, facetiously, that she might have gone in for pictures of musclemen, and, seeing me coming up the street, she had rushed them into hiding and brought out the old pictures.

  That could account for the evidence--except for one thing. I hadn't dallied. She could not possibly have seen me earlier than sixty seconds before I came up the front walk.

  Still, the telegrapher at the depot could have called her and told her I was here when he saw me get off the train.

  I shrugged the matter off and went to the guest room. It too was the same as always, except for one thing. A picture.

  It was a color photograph of the church, taken from the street. The picture was in a frame, but without glass over it, and was about eighteen inches wide and thirty high.

  It was a very good picture. Very lifelike. There was a car parked at the curb in front of the church, and someone inside the car smoking a cigarette, and it was so real I would have sworn I could see the streamer of smoke rising from the cigarette moving.

  The odor of good food came from the kitchen, reminding me to get busy. I opened my two-suiter and took out my toilet kit and went to the bathroom.

  I shaved, brushed my teeth, and combed my hair. Afterward I popped into my room just for a second to put my toilet kit on the dresser, and hurried to the dining room.

  Something nagged at the back of my mind all the time I was eating. After dinner Aunt Matilda suggested I'd better get some sleep. I couldn't argue. I was already asleep on my feet. Her fried chicken and creamed gravy and mashed potatoes had been an opiate.

  I didn't even bother to hang up my clothes. I slipped into the heaven of comfort of the bed and closed my eyes. And the next minute it was morning.

  Getting out of bed, I stopped in mid motion. The picture of the church was no longer on the wall. And as I stared at the blank spot where it had been, the thing that had nagged me during dinner last night finally leaped into consciousness.

  When I had dashed into the room and out again last night on the way to the dining room I had glanced briefly at the picture and something had been different about it. Now I knew what had been different.

  The car had no longer been in front of the church.

  * * * * *

  I lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. I thought about that picture, and simply could not bring myself to believe the accuracy of that fleeting impression.

  Aunt Matilda had slipped into my room and removed the picture while I slept. That was obvious. Why had she done that? The fleeting impression that I couldn't be positive about would give her a sensible reason.

  I studied my memory of that picture as I had closely studied it. It had been a remarkable picture. The more I recalled its details the more remarkable it became. I couldn't remember any surface gloss or graining to it, but of course I had not been looking for such things. Only an expert photographer would notice or recognize such technical details.

  My thoughts turned in the direction of Aunt Matilda--and her telegram. Her source of income, I knew, was her part of the estate of my grandfather, and amounted to something like thirty thousand dollars. I knew that she was terrified of touching one cent of the capital, and lived well within the income from good sound stocks.

  * * * * *

  I took her telegram out of the pocket of my coat which was hanging over the back of a chair. COME AT ONCE STOP AM IN TERRIBLE TROUBLE ... The only kind of terrible trouble Matilda could be in was if some swindler talked her out of some of her capital! And that definitely would not be easy to do. I grinned to myself at the recollection of her worrying herself sick once over what would happen to her if there was a revolution and the new government refused to honor the old government bonds.

  Things began to make sense. Her telegram, then those pictures moved around in the front room, and the one she had forgotten to hide, in the guest room. If the other pictures were anything like it, I could see how Aunt Matilda might cash in on part of her securities to invest in what she thought was a sure thing.

  But sure things are only as good as the people in control of them. Many a sure thing has been lost to the original investors by stupid decisions leading to bankruptcy, and many a seemingly sure thing has fleeced a lot of innocent victims.

  Slowly, as I thought it out, I became sure that that was what had happened.

  Then why Aunt Matilda's about-face, hiding the pictures and telling me to go back to Chicago? Had she threatened whoever was behind this, and gotten her money back? Or had she again become convinced that her financial venture was sound?

  In either case, why was she trying to keep me from knowing about the pictures?

  I made up my mind. Whether Aunt Matilda liked it or not, I was going to stay until I got to the bottom of things. What Aunt Matilda evidently didn't realize was that no inventor who really had something would waste time trying to find backing in a place like Sumac.

  Getting dressed, I decided that first on the agenda would be to find where Matilda had hidden those pictures, and get a good look at them.

  That was simpler than I expected it to be. When I came out of my room I stuck my head in the kitchen doorway and said good morning to her, and she leaped to her feet to get some breakfast ready for me. It was obvious that she was anxious to get me fed and out of the house.

  Then I simply took the two steps past the bathroom door to the door to her bedroom and went in. The pictures were stacked against the side of her dresser. The one of the church was the first one. It was on its side.

  With a silent whistle of amazement I bent down to watch it. The car was not parked at the curb in it, but there were several children walking along, obviously on their way to school. And they were walking. Moving.

  * * * * *

  I picked up the picture. It was as heavy as it should be, but not more. A faint whisper of sound seemed to come from it. I put my ear closer and heard children's voices. I explored with my ear close to the surface, and found that the voices were loudest when my ear was closest to the one talking, as though the voices came out of the picture directly from the images!

  All it needed to be perfect was a volume control somewhere. I searched, and found it behind the upper right corner of the picture. I twisted it very slowly, and the voices became louder. I turned it back to the position it had been in.

  The next picture was of the railroad depot. The telegrapher and baggage clerk were going around the side of the depot towards the tracks. A freight train was rushing through the picture.

  Even as I watched it in the picture, I heard the wail of a train whistle in the distance, and it was coming from outside, across town. That freight train was going through town right now.

  I put the pictures back the way they had been, and stole softly from Aunt Matilda's bedroom to the bathroom, and closed the door.

  "No wonder Aunt Matilda invested in this thing!" I said to my image in the mirror as I shaved.

  Picture TV would make all other TV receivers obsolete! Full color TV at that! And with some new principle in stereophonic sound!

  What about the fact that neither picture had been plugged into an outlet? Probably run by batteries.

  What about the lack of weight? Obviously a new TV principle was involved. Maybe it required fewer circuits and less power.

  What about the broadcasting end, the cameras? Permanently set up? What about the broadcast channels?

  There had been ten or twelve pictures. I'd only looked at two. Was each a different scene? Twelve different broadcasting stations in Sumac?

  It had me dizzy. Probably the new
TV principle was so simple that all that could be taken care of without millions of dollars worth of equipment.

  A new respect for Aunt Matilda grew in me. She had latched on to a money maker! It didn't hurt to know that I was her favorite nephew, either. With my Ph.D. in physics, and my aunt as one of the stockholders, I could probably land a good job with the company. What a deal!

  By the time I finished shaving I was whistling. I was still whistling when I went into the kitchen for breakfast.

  "You'll have to hurry, Arthur," Aunt Matilda said. "Your train leaves in forty-five minutes."

  "I'm not leaving," I said cheerfully.

  I went over to the bright breakfast nook and sat down, and took a cautious sip of coffee. I grunted my approval of it and looked around toward Aunt Matilda, smiling.

  She was staring at me with wide eyes. She looked as haggard as though she had just heard she had a week to live.

  "But you must go!" she croaked as though my not going were unthinkable.

  "Nonsense, you old fox," I said. "I know a good thing as well as you do. I want to get a job with that outfit."

  She came toward me with a wild expression on her face.

  "Get out!" she screamed. "Get out of my house! I won't have it! You catch that train and get out of town. Do you hear?"

  "But, Aunt Matilda!" I protested.

  * * * * *

  In the end I had to get out or she would have had a stroke. She was shaking like a leaf, her skin mottled and her eyes wild, as I went down the front steps with my bag.

  "You get that train, do you hear?" was the last thing she screamed at me as I hurried toward Main Street.

  However, I had no intention of leaving town with Aunt Matilda upset that way. I'd let her have time to cool off, then come back. Meanwhile I'd try to get to the bottom of things. A thing as big as wall TV in full color and stereophonic sound must be the talk of the town. I'd find out where they had their office and go talk with them. A career with something like that would be the best thing I could ever hope to find. And getting in on the ground floor!

  It surprised me that Aunt Matilda could be so insanely greedy. I shook my head in wonder. It didn't figure.

  I had breakfast at the hotel cafe and made a point of telling the waitress, who knew me, that it was my second breakfast, and that I had intended to catch the morning train back to Chicago, but maybe I wouldn't.

  After I finished eating I asked if it would be okay to leave my suitcase behind the counter while I looked around a bit. She showed me where to put it so it would be out of the way.

  When I paid for my breakfast I half turned away, then turned back casually.

  "Oh, by the way," I said. "Where's this wall TV place?"

  "This what?" she said.

  "You know," I said. "Color TV like a picture you hang on a wall."

  All the color faded from her face. Her eyes went past me, staring. I turned in the direction she was staring, and on the wall above the plateglass front of the cafe was a picture.

  That is, there was a picture frame and a pair of dark glasses that took up most of the picture, with the lower part of a forehead and the upper part of a nose. I had noticed it once while I was eating and had assumed it was a display ad for sun glasses. Now I looked at it more closely, but could detect no movement in it. It still looked like an ad for sun glasses.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I heard the waitress say, her voice edged with fear.

  "Huh?" I said, turning my head back to look at her. "Oh. Well, never mind."

  I left the cafe with every outward appearance of casual innocence; but inside I was beginning to realize for the first time the possibilities and the danger that could lie in the use of this new TV development.

  That had been a Big-Brother-is-Watching-you setup back there in the cafe, except that it had been a girl instead of a man, judging from the style of sun glasses and the smoothness of the nose and forehead.

  I had wondered about the broadcasting end of things. Now I knew. That had been the TV "eye," and somewhere there was a framed picture hanging on the wall, bringing in everything that took place in the cafe, including everything that was said. Everything I had said, too. It was an ominous feeling.

  Aunt Matilda had almost had a stroke trying to get me out of town. Now I knew why. She was caught in this thing and wanted to save me. Four days ago she had probably not fully realized the potentiality for evil of the invention, but by the time I showed up she knew it.

  Well, she was right. This was not something for me to tackle. I would keep up my appearance of not suspecting anything, and catch that train Aunt Matilda wanted me to catch.

  * * * * *

  From way out in the country came the whistle of the approaching milk run, the train that would take me back to Chicago. In Chicago I would go to the F.B.I, and tell them the whole thing. They wouldn't believe me, of course, but they would investigate. If the thing hadn't spread any farther than Sumac it would be a simple matter to stop it.

  I'd hurry back to the cafe and get my suitcase and tell the waitress I'd decided to catch the train after all.

  I turned around.

  Only I didn't turn around.

  That's as nearly as I can describe it. I did turn around. I know I did. But the town turned around with me, and the sun and the clouds and the countryside. So maybe I only thought I turned around.

  When I tried to stop walking it was different. I simply could not stop walking. Nothing was in control of my mind. It was more like stepping on the brakes and the brakes not responding.

  I gave up trying, more curious about what was happening than alarmed. I walked two blocks along Main Street. Ahead of me I saw a sign. It was the only new sign I had seen in Sumac. In ornate Neon script it said, "PORTRAITS by Lana."

  * * * * *

  I don't know whether my feet took me inside independently of my mind or not, because I was sure that this was the place and I wanted to go in anyway.

  Not much had been done to modernize the interior of the shop. I remembered that the last time I had been here it had been a stamp collector headquarters run by Mr. Mason and his wife. The counter was still there, but instead of stamp displays it held a variety of standard portraits such as you can see in any portrait studio. None of the TV portraits were on display here.

  The same bell that used to tinkle when I came into the stamp store tinkled in back of the partition when I came in. A moment later the curtain in the doorway of the partition parted, and a girl came out.

  How can I describe her? In appearance she was anyone of a thousand smartly dressed brunettes that wait on you in quality photograph studios, and yet she wasn't. She was as much above that in cut as the average smartly dressed girl is above a female alcoholic after a ten-day drunk. She was perfect. Too perfect. She was the type of girl a man would dream of meeting some day, but if he ever did he would run like hell because he could never hope to live up to such perfection.

  "You have come to have your portrait taken?" she asked. "I am Lana."

  "I thought you already had my portrait," I said. "Didn't you get it from that eye in the hotel cafe?"

  "It's not the same thing," Lana said. "Through an eye you remain a variable in the Mantram complex. It takes the camera to fix you, so that you are an iconic invariant in the Mantram." She smiled and half turned toward the curtain she had come through. "Would you step this way, please?" she invited.

  "How much will it cost?" I said, not moving.

  "Nothing, of course!" Lana said. "Terrestrial money is of no use to me since you have nothing I would care to buy. And don't be alarmed. No harm will come to you, or anyone else." A fleeting expression of concern came over her. "I realize that many of the people of Sumac are quite alarmed, but that is to be expected of a people uneducated enough to still be superstitious."

  I went past her through the curtain. Behind the partition I expected to see out-of-this-world scientific equipment stacked to the ceiling. Instead, there was only a portrait
camera on a tripod. It had a long bellows and would take a plate the same size as that picture of the church I had seen.

  "You see?" Lana said. "It's just a camera." She smiled disarmingly.

  * * * * *

  I went toward it casually, and suddenly I stopped as though another mind controlled my actions. When I gave up the idea I had had of smashing the camera, the control vanished.

  There was no lens in the lens frame. "Where's the lens?" I said.

  "It doesn't use a glass lens," Lana said. "When I take the picture a lens forms just long enough to focus the elements of your body into a Mantram fix." She touched my shoulder. "Would you sit down over there, please?"

  "What do you mean by a Mantram fix?" I asked her.

  She paused by the camera and smiled at me. "I use your language," she said. "In some of your legends you have the notion of a Mantram, or what you consider magical spell. In one aspect the notion is of magical words that can manipulate natural forces directly. The notion of a devil doll is a little closer. Only instead of actual substance from the subject--hair, fingernail parings, and so on--the Mantram matrix takes the detailed force pattern of the subject, through the lens when it forms. So, in your concepts, what results is an iconic Mantram. But it operates both ways. You'll see what I mean by that."

  With another placating smile she stepped behind the camera and without warning light seemed to explode from the very air around me, without any source. For a brief second I seemed to see--not a glittering lens--but a black bottomless hole form in the metal circle at the front of the camera. And--an experience I am familiar with now--I seemed to rush into the bottomless darkness of that hole and back again, at the rate of thousands of times a second, arriving at some formless destination and each time feeling it take on more of form.

  "There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Lana said.

  I felt strangely detached, as though I were in two places at the same time. I told her so.

  "You'll get used to it," she assured me. "In fact, you will get to enjoy it. I do. Especially when I've made several prints."

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Who are you? What are you?"

  "I'm a photographer!" Lana said. "I'm connected with the natural history museum of the planet I live on. I go to various places and take pictures, and they go into exhibits for the people to watch."